Saturday, 12 March 2011

Water: Expectations

I'm almost certain, that if I had a therapist, I'd be told that I should talk about how I feel.

I'm upset.

I'm frustrated.

I'm stressed.

I went downstairs to the basement last night, innocently enough. I was looking for some rain pants.

I wasn't expecting the splash. Who expects that? Who expects to put their foot down on the carpet and have it splash.

I wasn't expecting to see the signs of water seepage along the edges of the hardwood floor in the basement either. Or the bubbles in the paint under the basement window.

I was expecting to find rain pants, run back up stairs, put them in the truck and head out to pickup a trailer of canoes.

I didn't expect the friendly conversation with the nice young lady that answered the phone when I called the insurance company.

I didn't expect to talk to an insurance adjuster. (Although, he was amazingly helpful, and did a great job of walking us through the process.) The lady from the restoration place was great too.

What it basically comes down to is that we had water enter through or around the basement window. From all purposes, it looks as if we have no insurance coverage. It wasn't sewer backup, it wasn't a pipe burst, it was water seepage.

We haven't heard back from the insurance agency. Probably not until later in the week.

We did start damage control this morning. We cut away the wet drywall, ripped up the hardwood floor (sob), and tore out the wet insulation.

While tearing out the drywall around the electrical panel, we realized we could see daylight. Not the best thing to see from inside the basement. We also discovered that there is no insulation around the 'headers'. The headers are the pockets above your exterior walls made by your floor joists.

Usually, you'd want those insulated. It tends to keep the house warmer, especially the floors.

So, in order to fix that, you need access to them. So, we tore out the drywalled, stippled ceiling too.

We also found about 50 or so advertising flyers for Kanata Self Storage. They were stuffed in the headers, as if they were for insulation. Oh, and a report card from the spring semester from Sir Robert Borden High School dated 1985. Two years after the house was built.

I've got another 150 square feet of hardwood to pull up, but it's going to wait until the morning.

Then we need to figure out the best method to fix everything. Funny how something like this isn't built into our monthly budget. We just don't have a line item for 'flood repair' or the like.